LinHDD is a simple front-end utility that offers a graphical interface to several basic Linux Hard Disk tools like hdparm, cfdisk, df, and mkfs. hdparm is a command line utility to set and view IDE hard disk hardware parameters, like the IDE read/write performance .df (disk free) is used to display the amount of available disk space for filesystems
The mkfs command makes a new file system on a specified device whilecfdisk is a partition editor, used to view, add, delete, and alter hard-disk partitions.
With the help of the graphical interface that LinHDD offers you can obtain information, partition your hard disks and more without using the command-line and all its parameters and flags.

LinHDD supports the Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, JFS and XFS filesystems. Installation on a Debian based system like Ubuntu is quite easy; On your Ubuntu box do;

apt-get install linhdd

Alternatively unpack the linHDD-0.4.tar.bz2 and copy the LinHDD.py file into the /usr/bin folder. This is sufficient cause the application consists of a single Python script. Remember you have to be root to carry out this installation.

To benefit from all the functions this utility offers you have to run it as admin or root.

sudo linHDD.py or su linHDD.py.

The interface is very intuitive, choosing “Check for bad blocks” you can verify of certain parts of your hard disk have been damaged.
To partition your hard disk make sure the given partition/s is/are unmounted (umount /media/hda1), if not the relative buttons would be disactivated.